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Archive for the ‘Slice of Life’ Category

Butterweed

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, tagged , , , , on March 25, 2014| 5 Comments »

Slice of Life Day 25. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Slice of Life Day 25. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

yellow top, butterweed

Driving down the road,
I stop to praise the wildflowers
guarding the gully
like yellow-billed soldiers.

I praise your sensible size,
clustered in God’s bouquet,
open to the arrival of bees,
spreading the wings of spring.

Your beauty is the first swamp color,
popping up in winter’s wake.
A glorious butterweed ribbon
unbounded, blowing in the fresh breeze.

Even with your death, you feed us,
such is the circle of life,
from compost to crawfish,
trapped, boiled, and Cayenne-peppered,
just in time for Good Friday Feasts.

–Margaret Simon

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Sweet Potato Queen Weekend

Posted in Slice of Life, tagged , , , on March 24, 2014| 6 Comments »

Slice of Life Day 24. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Slice of Life Day 24. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

I am home exhausted and happy from a delightfully fun weekend with my fellow Berry Queens in Jackson, MS. for the Sweet Potato Queens Weekend. I am a Diva in the hierarchy of our membership in New Iberia. The Berry Queens (so named because the nickname for New Iberia is “The Berry”) have grown by leaps and bounds since I joined in its inaugural year, 2008. Now we are up to 100+ members. We were easily one of the largest groups at the SPQ weekend with 30 women.

On Friday, my friend Cathy and I dressed in black petticoats topped with golden tree skirts. (Cathy is so creatively clever.) We attended the Big Hat Brunch with hundreds of other women dressed in crazy costumes and big hats. After the brunch, we shopped around Fondren, an area in Jackson that has been revitalized as an arts community.

Cathy and I stop off at Brent's Drugs, a location used in the movie, The Help.

Cathy and I stop off at Brent’s Drugs, a location used in the movie, The Help.

One of the blessings of this weekend was going to the lake. My parents live north of Jackson near a lake, so the first few nights we stayed there. We had time to visit some with Mom and Dad and enjoy the peacefulness of the lake, totally different from the very crazy active time with the Sweet Potato Queens.

Friday night, Cathy and I became a spectacle downtown in our matching wigs. The buses for some unknown reason did not run from the hotel, so not many queens appeared for the Bouffants concert. Everyone around wanted to take pictures with us. We are probably all over Facebook on strangers’ pages. Even the Bouffants themselves noticed us and called us up during one of their songs. We felt famous!

Cathy, Lory, and me at the Bouffants concert.

Cathy, Lory, and me at the Bouffants concert.

On Saturday, I joined my fellow Berry Queens as we represented New Iberia in the RAD Color Run for Blair Batson Hospital. Here are a few of us squeezing into a hotel bathroom to put strawberry tattoos on our cheeks. I’m the one in the tutu.

tattoos for color run

The run was so much fun. I walked, of course, but while I did, I got to know two of our new members (known as virgins to the Sweet Potato Queens). At the end, I was covered with color and feeling great. The day was a glorious 70 degrees.

Saturday night was the big Zippity Doo Dah parade. I walked the 5K route again, and this time I was wearing a strawberry dress, a wig with light-up noodles, and boots. This time there was a huge crowd to throw beads and strawberry Tootsie Rolls to. What a blast!

A selfie with our Boss Queen Jerre at the parade.

A selfie with our Boss Queen Jerre at the parade.

Jill Connor Brown is the brilliant woman who created this whole kingdom of Queens. She believes in the inner beauty of every woman. She closed the weekend with a touching speech at the Bathrobe Brunch. Here she honored Vietnam Veterans for whom the parade was held. She shared stories of her childhood and had us all in tears when she talked about her friend who had gone off to the Vietnam war. She spoke of forgiveness and the need in all of us to forgive, not for the other person, but for ourselves. Jill Connor Brown is a hero. I thank her for creating a time for having just plain fun for the sake of fun, and for empowering us to be beautiful, inside and out.

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Storybird

Posted in Digital Learning, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged , , on March 23, 2014| 8 Comments »

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

Slice of Life Day 23. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Slice of Life Day 23. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Today is Digilit Sunday. Link up your digital literacy post each Sunday. Use the logo on your site and link back here.

I teach gifted elementary kids. At any time during the year, I can get new students. Recently I was blessed with two first graders. I am not as comfortable with this age as I am with middle grades. I introduce them to using technology for presentations. They will need technology skills as they move up in grades in gifted classes. These two students are total opposites in tech savviness. Andrew (is it a boy thing?) learns quickly. He has made two Powerpoints learning how to upload images and use the animation tools. So I wanted him to try something different and new. I directed him to Storybird. If you haven’t tried Storybird, you should. I think it is great for younger students. My older ones feel restricted by the choices of images.

Andrew's storybird copy

Andrew found a palate of images that he liked, and immediately wrote the title, The Sad Bear that Didn’t Have Friends. The pictures led him to write a story about a bear and his friend, a girl named Gina, who were separated in the woods. The bear found new friends, but Gina only found a tree shaped like a peacock. The images led Andrew to write more and add a little humor as well. Using Storybird, I was able to show him some basic editing, such as adding punctuation and capital letters. He also wrote using and over and over. I read his long sentence without taking a breath to show him that the reader needs a period or a comma, so she can breathe. I think we both enjoyed this process. Andrew was proud to read his story aloud to his classmates using the smart board.

http://storybird.com/books/the-sad-bear-that-didnt-have-friends/?token=qsuvuqe5vc

Link up your Digital Literacy post this week:

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Celebrating a Break Through

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Gifted Education, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged , on March 22, 2014| 7 Comments »

Discover. Play. Build.
Slice of Life Day 22. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Slice of Life Day 15. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

My post will be short today. I am spending the weekend with my Berry Queens in Jackson, MS. for the Sweet Potato Queens weekend. I’ll be writing about this wholesome-woman-power fun later, but today I want to celebrate what may be a breakthrough.

I have a 6th grade gifted boy who has been extremely underachieving all year long. This is a typical problem with gifted students, boys in particular. He has resisted almost every incentive or motivation I have put before him. I have tried a number of things, but this week I may have made the miracle happen.

Karl(not his real name) may have found the just right book, Hatchet, to finally make him love reading. His reader response on Tuesday, posted late as usual, was 48 words long and began with “I really like this book.” I read this and had a serious talk with him. I did all of the talking. I blasted him. Then I looked at his tear-stained face and said, “You may not think that you are able to do this. You may think you are not good enough to be in this class. But you are here because you are good enough. You can do it.” I took another student’s journal and read to him her response to Hatchet.

I prompted him with questions, “How would you feel if you were Brian and the pilot died? If you had to fly that plane, what would that feel like?” I told him to go read a chapter and come back to the computer and write another response. I threw in more bait. “If you make a personal connection to the book, you can use it as a Slice of Life.”

He came to me later and said with a grin, “I read more than one chapter.” Then he wrote 250 words! Not only did he write more words, he made a connection to the character. I’m not sure if it was the “discussion” or the student model or the just right book, perhaps all three, but I am celebrating a break through. I gave Karl praise, but to top it all off, Anna Gratz Cockerille, the Two Writing Teachers leader for the Classroom Challenge, commented on his post. You can read his post here.

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Big Words

Posted in Poetry Friday, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged , , on March 21, 2014| 10 Comments »

Slice of Life Day 21. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Slice of Life Day 21. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Poetry Friday Round-up is at The Drift Record

Poetry Friday Round-up is at The Drift Record

I am constantly amazed by my gifted students. They can process and learn at such a rapid rate. I love words. That’s no secret. They know it. So we often spend time talking about words.

Vannisa, a 4th grader, and I are reading A Snicker of Magic together. (Actually, she has passed me up.) I asked her to put some of the magical words on the board. She made a list including felicity, serendipity, paradigm, gargantuan, spendiddly, snicker-doodle, lickety-split. Aren’t these great words?

I pulled up a poem that Katie Muhtaris posted on her blog Coffee Fueled Musings to show her students how to use strong verbs. Her poem, Oreos, inspired Vannisa to write about cookies.

Chewy Cookies

Stretching for the red box it slumbers in,
peel off the wrapper
decant a glass of milk into the tall transparent cup.
Let the flow of white water dive into the pool of air.
Snatch a crispy golden cookie.
Devour the serendipity.
Taste the felicity of the snicker-doodle.

–Vannisa, age 10

Matthew, otherwise known as Magic Matt on our class blog, took a break from his magic tricks to write a poem. He didn’t know it was good. He told me, “Don’t post this anyWHERE.” Then I read it and said, “Wow!”

Matt said, “Mrs. Simon, did you just say Wow about one of my poems?”

I think you will say Wow! too.

Felicity

Felicity fills my soul,
warming my heart like a gargantuan fire.
Isolated mountains dot the Earth
like looking through a kaleidoscope.
A paradigm of God’s grandest creation meeting reality.

–Matthew, age 10

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Getting Ready for a Party

Posted in Slice of Life, tagged , on March 20, 2014| 4 Comments »

Slice of Life Day 20. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Slice of Life Day 20. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

There’s nothing like getting ready for a party that makes you look at your home with a critical eye. There are things you put off doing until a party is coming. My daughter is having an engagement party for her best friend, Katie. We are getting ready. This weekend we threw out all the dead plants from the extreme winter and planted new ones around the deck. It’s so nice and fresh.

deck plants

We hired a carpenter/ handyman to come paint the ceiling where there were stains from long ago leaking. (The roof was changed two years ago) While he was up on the scaffolding, (our ceiling is 17 feet high) I asked him to clean the light fixtures and change the bulbs. Well, that didn’t go as planned and the light fixture broke. A trip to Home Depot to find a quick fix. I think new lights will move up the line on our renovation list. (Renovation is constant in a 40+ year old house.)

Today, I cleaned the fire place. This is something I rarely do. The ashes smell like a camp fire every time I pass by. While I love that scent, I thought for a party, it should be clean.

Why is it that I never notice the build up of dust in the corners until now? My list grows.

The preparations continue. My daughter is doing most of them, arranging for the food, ordering the cake, making a play list, and hiring a bar tender. I am enjoying being a part of her gift for her friend.

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A Poet with my Name

Posted in Slice of Life, Writing, tagged , , on March 19, 2014| 8 Comments »

Slice of Life Day 19. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Slice of Life Day 19. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

I subscribe to The American Academy of Poets Poem a Day email blast, so every day I get a poem. Sometimes they pile up in my inbox. I really hate to just delete them, but I don’t often have time to read them when I am checking my email. But this morning, the poet’s name caught my eye, Margaret Gibson.

When you’ve lived the first 20 something years of your life with a name, you get to know it, so imagine how surprised I was to find out I was a poet. At least I like to think of myself as a poet, but in actuality, I haven’t published much poetry. And truth be told, I use my married name more often now. But still, I was taken aback.

Of course, I didn’t write the poem. Another Margaret-Gibson-named poet did. I can only dream of being published by LSU Press. This namesake of mine lives in Connecticut, not Louisiana. I googled her. She is older than me (good). She is attractive (also good). I actually think we would like each other a lot.

Margaret Gibson, the poet. Not me.

Margaret Gibson, the poet. Not me.

Here are some lovely quotes by Margaret Gibson:

Poetry is really an act of taking things that come to you, a scarlet tanager or an act of war — whatever takes your attention, you study it for yourself, but you also take it into that part of yourself where you test things. You look out and you look in.

You realize everything is personal and everything is impersonal. We’re all part of one enormous, sometimes painful, sometimes joyful experience.

One of the things I think we’re here to do is to find the things that are broken and to mend them. Or to find where there is fracture or division and create a wholeness.

from Grace: A Magazine for Women

Margaret has a new book coming out in September entitled The Broken Cup which includes poems about life with her husband, author David McKain who has Alzheimer’s. The poem I received in my email is Losing it, speaking so frankly and eloquently about the loss of things.

What little I know, I hold closer,
more dear, especially now
that I take the daily
reinvention of loss as my teacher.

Read the whole poem here.

Funny thing, this daily writing practice. I had no idea what I was going to write about when I sat down at my computer. My avoidance strategy was to read my emails. What a gift I received today from a woman with my name!

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Bird

Posted in Books, Slice of Life, tagged , , , , on March 18, 2014| 10 Comments »

Slice of Life Day 18. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Slice of Life Day 18. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Bird

I follow middle grade authors on Facebook, Twitter, and on their blogs. Recently, Caroline Starr Rose, author of May B, posted a book give-away on her blog for Crystal Chan’s book Bird. And I won! The book arrived with a sweet note from Crystal Chan. Her note said, “Please tell about it–that’s the best way to give Bird a strong tail wind for its first flight.” Already I knew I would love this book. Then I read the first line, “My grandpa stopped speaking the day he killed my brother.”

I have not written book reviews, ever. I hate to admit this. I’m supposed to be a writer. For some reason, this kind of writing has intimidated me. But when I got this book and Crystal’s note, I knew I had to give it a try. I talked to my student Vannisa about this review. She read Bird. I told her we would write the review together. There is a sense of safety in collaborative writing, and Vannisa had some good insights about the theme that I hadn’t even thought of.

Vannisa googled writing book reviews and made a list of steps for us to follow. She checked them off as we completed each one. I love how we had a role reversal here. Now she wants to read A Snicker of Magic with me. So maybe we will write more reviews together.

I posted this review on Goodreads, my first! I want to publicly thank Crystal Chan for this wonderful gift, her words, her character Jewel, and her touching story.

Crystal Chan has successfully written the saddest first page ever. She draws us in to the life of 12 year old Jewel who was born on the day her brother died. So her birthday is always a day of grief for her parents and grandpa. Jewel has never heard her grandpa speak because he stopped talking on that fateful day.

Jewel’s life changes the day she meets a boy in a tree. His name is John just like her late brother. Coincidence or not?

Crystal Chan leads us on a journey of action and emotion. I felt like I had been betrayed as Jewel overhears her parents arguing.

“I was never wanted. Not even the moment I was coming into the world.”

Jewel’s friendship with John may be a coincidence or a sign. Her grandfather believes it is a curse on her family, but Jewel believes it is good luck. Jewel sees a bit of herself in John. They both dream about their future; Jewel wants to be a geologist and John wants to be an astronaut. Mixed in this enchanting story are facts about the Jamaican culture and the universe.

You just want to read Bird again, to climb trees again, and to dream of a better life.

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Full Ides (of March) Moon

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged , , , on March 17, 2014| 9 Comments »

Slice of Life Day 17. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Slice of Life Day 17. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

I have a tree-hugging naturalist friend who sends out an email every month around the time of the full moon. His email is called Full Moon Alert or FMA.

One of the methods of writing I enjoy is erasure poetry or found poetry. I often find a poem in Jim’s FMA.

flower tree

Full Ides (of March) Moon

Full moon rises Sunday at sunset.
Spring officially starts Friday,
Buds swelling,
swamp red maples coming into bloom,
thangs were moving y’all.

Sky reverberates
with the smudge of cranes.
I love you little.
I love you big.

My ladies are working hard already.
European honey bees are an all-girl operation,
and these are happy dancing
their butter butts, like the warblers
catching Crane flies.

A pair of raptors dive spectacularly,
two lovers celebrating newfound love
in this the season of love.

Happy spring y’all!

Get out and enjoy the fine spring weather.
Get out and stand there with your mouth open
watching that moonrise and sunset with loved ones.
What a gift! And bring some little ones along.

–Margaret Simon, found from Possum Foret’s FMA March 15, 2014

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